Yarmouthport woman gets last word with message on headstone

Did you ever get so mad at your neighbors that you eternally damned them?

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By JASON KOLNOS

capecodtimes.com

By JASON KOLNOS

Posted Oct. 27, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By JASON KOLNOS

Posted Oct. 27, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

Did you ever get so mad at your neighbors that you eternally damned them?

OK, put down your hands — maybe we've all been there. But did you ever get so red hot angry that you had an old-school neighbor curse pounded onto your gravestone?

That's what Mary C. Dolencie did. And her venomous last words live on in the Ancient Cemetery in Yarmouthport.

"May eternal damnation be upon those in Whaling Port who, without knowing me, have maliciously vilified me. May the curse of God be upon them and theirs."

While the curse sounds like something out of the Old Testament, the words were written on Dolencie's stone in the 1980s. And while "Whaling Port" evokes images of Moby Dick's New Bedford, it actually refers to a housing association located near the Ancient Cemetery.

"She did it out of spite," Ted Barnicoat of T.R. Barnicoat Monuments in South Yarmouth said. His father, the late David Barnicoat, carved the inscription into Dolencie's headstone.

"She apparently thought that the entire neighborhood was against her," said Barnicoat, recalling stories his father told him.

Barnicoat said that Dolencie, who lived alone, was known as an eccentric character and rubbed some neighbors the wrong way. The Times couldn't locate anyone living in the Whaling Port neighborhood today who remembers meeting Dolencie, but they've certainly heard stories about her over the years.

Some said Dolencie (1906-1985) hosted too many cats, which rankled the neighbors; others claim it was her penchant for feeding pigeons.

Local author and historian Haynes Mahoney, 93, a longtime resident of the Whaling Port community, said Dolencie had a beef with his friend John Jackson, who lived behind her.

"He talked to me about her several times, usually with a sort of amused annoyance," Mahoney said. "She got angry with them for I don't know why. She would shine lights in their windows. She made a real nuisance of herself."

Dolencie left the bulk of her estate to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, according to local newspaper accounts from mid-1980s. Reports indicate that the MSPCA was displeased with the curse, and there was an unsuccessful effort to block the gravestone from going into the ground.

His father had a signed contract with Dolencie, and he was determined to honor her final wishes, according to Barnicoat. Efforts by the Times to reach any Dolencie kin were unsuccessful.

So far, the curse appears to be a dud. Whaling Port residents happily report a lack of poxes, plagues or zombies.

"I don't think we've had any more bad luck than anyone else," said Sue Rich, who lives in the home formerly owned by the Jacksons.

When Rich bought her home in 1995, she was told that the neighborhood could be cursed. "It didn't bother me because I don't really believe in those things," Rich said. "I was frankly saddened for this lady who must have had so much turmoil in her life that she'd put this on her gravestone."

"Nobody takes it seriously, of course. It's a funny thing, we can laugh about it," said Mahoney's daughter Toni Pinkham.

John McManus, former president of the Whaling Port homeowner's association thinks Dolencie had it all wrong. "There is no malice in this area; why she cursed the entire Whaling Port is beyond me," he said. "It's really a community of people who look out for each other."

"I don't know of any other vitriolic ones like this," Carlson said. "It may be a forerunner of what's to come when people start to feel like they have more freedom about what they write on an epitaph."